If you want to get a taste of the unscientific claptrap frequently being paraded in fundie circles, Kevin Swanson of Generations Radio gave us a lulu on his Thursday podcast. Swanson had as his guest Kevin Peeples, the director of "Birth Control: How Did We Get Here?"--a movie which argues that birth control runs counter to the Bible. Swanson made the breathtaking claim that women who use birth control have actually been found to have the remains of fetuses in their wombs. No, this isn't snark.
Swanson: I’m beginning to get some evidence from certain doctors and certain scientists that have done research on women’s wombs after they’ve gone through the surgery, and they’ve compared the wombs of women who were on the birth control pill to those who were not on the birth control pill. And they have found that with women who are on the birth control pill, there are these little tiny fetuses, these little babies, that are embedded into the womb. They’re just like dead babies. They’re on the inside of the womb. And these wombs of women who have been on the birth control pill effectively have become graveyards for lots and lots of little babies.
Peeples: We’ve actually heard on both sides of that. We’re researching that and want to make sure we speak correctly to that in our second film. But we have medical advice on both sides of the table there, so we want to make sure that we communicate that properly.
Swanson: It would seem, and I realize that people are a little split on what are all the effects of the birth control pill, but it would seem that there’s a tremendous risk in the use of it for the life of children.
In other words--birth control is murder, just like abortion is murder. You can't make this stuff up.
Perhaps, though, Swanson was trying to outdo Peeples in the lunacy department. Earlier, Peeples claimed that birth control was frowned upon until the Nazis' ham-handed approach to family planning led the church to paint birth control as a choice. In the process, though, Peeples thinks it led to women overstepping their boundaries.
Peeples: It starts with men and women fighting and not being happy with the role that God put them in that he laid out in Genesis. So whenever you seek to desire, when women seek to desire the men’s role, they lose the part and the idea of what children does, not just for the kingdom and not just does with their family, but does for their gender role.
Swanson: Are you saying that the population control stuff, egalitarian feminism, birth control, abortion, they’re all sort of interrelated?
Peeples: Yeah, it wasn’t until after World War II that they begin to separate them. Abortion, sterilization, eugenics and birth control were all tied together, they were all kind of a package for eugenics and population control. Hitler took the fall for taking it very aggressively and dramatically, and so they said, ‘Hey, let’s kind of take this back, let’s get rid of the negative things and let’s play on Christian liberty, let’s play on freedom, let’s play on people kind of taking this upon themselves to control population rather than forcing it on them. So, again, it’s just another effect of not researching our history to know what happened in the world alongside of the Church.
The frightening thing about this kind of nonsense is that so many people who live in the fundie bubble (private school/Christian school/fundie-oriented homeschooling for their kids, filtered Internet service, SkyAngel, and relying on Christian radio for news) actually embrace it. Swanson's webcast, for instance, has well over a million downloads.
Listen to the whole thing here (warning, self-downloading MP3).
5:17 PM PT: Since this made the rec list, I thought it would be a good idea if some of us told Swanson what they think about him peddling such pseudoscientific drivel. Drop him a line on Facebook.
5:57 PM PT: And my comment on Swanson's Facebook just got deleted. Cowards ...